Slaves of Obsession Read online

  Lanyon took the point. “I suppose it’s possible,” he said cautiously. “So Shearer is the villain, Breeland the fanatic, guilty of buying stolen guns and using Merrit’s love for him, but not of murder. And Merrit herself is guilty only of being led by her heart and ignoring her head? I suppose at sixteen that’s half to be expected.” He shrugged. “If a woman wouldn’t do all she could to help her betrothed, we’d be just as quick to criticize her.”

  “Probably,” Monk agreed, although privately he wondered just how much blind adoration he could take—perhaps at thirty a lot more than he could now. And would he have used it with the same disregard as Lyman Breeland did? Probably. What was given so freely was often valued too little. But the fact that he himself might have been no better did not soften his dislike for Breeland; if anything it deepened it.

  “Are you going to pursue that?” Lanyon asked curiously.

  “I’m going to pursue everything,” Monk replied. “Unless, of course, I find something so conclusive it isn’t necessary.” He grinned broadly at Lanyon, but it was ironic, and they both knew it.

  Lanyon shrugged. “Good luck.” He sounded as if he meant it.

  Monk started again at the very beginning, at the warehouse yard, following the trail of the wagons leaving. He remembered vividly going into the closed space in the pale, summer morning and seeing the dead bodies in their grotesque positions. He remembered Casbolt’s face in the light, the smell of blood, the wheel tracks over the stones.

  He also remembered Manassas and the strange reality of war. The whole of it was like a dream, all smaller than it should have been, the dust and the heat ridiculously commonplace. Gunshots were not like thunder; they were crackling, like dozens of sticks being snapped as a bonfire took hold. Only the cannons roared.

  But the blood and the fear had been more real than anyone could imagine, so stark they still came back to him every time he closed his eyes and forgot to guard against them. It was the smell that stayed in his memory.

  What were three deaths compared with so many? Some of the soldiers had been shot down without even a fight, just wasted, as thoughtlessly as a man mows down grass.

  Was that how Breeland looked at it? Did he see it not as murder but as war? Did he feel a few individual deaths were a small price to pay to secure the end of slavery for a whole race? And perhaps the end of the sin of enslaving for another race, his own? An argument could be made for it. Monk could make one himself.

  He knew what Hester would say. At least he thought he did. You did not save a people from sin by committing another sin yourself. But was she a realist? Or did she think of individuals, one man’s injuries or pain, one man’s grief, because it was what she could help, and refuse to see a wider whole?

  Certainly, Lyman Breeland ignored the individual and saw the thousands, the tens of thousands. And Monk found something in Breeland repellent. Did that make Breeland wrong, or only morally braver, more of a visionary and less of an ordinary, limited human being?

  Monk stood in the sun in Tooley Street and weighed the possibilities. The wagons had left through the gates and must have turned either left or right. The guns were too heavy to have been transported other than by horse-drawn vehicles or on barges along the river. The river was by far the closer. It was the way Alberton normally moved all heavy goods. It was the way everyone did.

  But Breeland was American. Perhaps he did not know that? Could he have gone by road to the Euston Square station? Well over a month had gone by. It would be hard to find witnesses who remembered anything, let alone were willing to testify to it.

  Could Breeland’s story be true? That was the place to start. The wagons loaded with six thousand guns would be big enough, passing through the streets in the middle of the night.

  But time was a whole different question. Breeland had said the note had come to him about midnight. Alberton was still alive then. He was killed around three, according to the medical evidence, and the reasonable deduction as to the loading of the guns. The wagons must have left immediately after. How long would it take them heavily laden, but in the traffic-free still of the night?

  He started to walk rapidly, then caught a cab, following the shortest route over the river towards the Euston Square station, thinking furiously all the way. Even at a trot, which wagons could not have done, he could not have made it in less than half- to three-quarters of an hour.

  He paid the cabdriver and strode into the station. He asked to see the stationmaster, quoting Lanyon’s name as if he had a right to.

  “It is regarding illegal shipment of arms,” he said grimly. “And triple murder. My information must be exact. Lives depend upon it, and perhaps Britain’s reputation for honor.”

  The clerk obeyed with alacrity. Let the decision for dealing with this be somebody else’s. “I’ll fetch Mr. Pickering, sir!”

  The stationmaster kept him waiting only fifteen minutes. He was an agreeable man with a thick gray mustache and handsome side-whiskers. He welcomed Monk into his office.

  “How can I be of assistance, sir?” he said mildly, but he eyed Monk up and down, weighing his importance and reserving judgment. He had heard wild statements before and was not easily impressed.

  Monk would not retreat, but he decided to phrase his request carefully.

  “Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Pickering. As you are no doubt aware, there was a triple murder in Tooley Street on June twenty-eighth, and a large shipment of British guns was stolen and exported to America.”

  “All London is aware of it, sir,” Pickering replied. “A very enterprising agent of enquiry tracked down the murderer and brought him back to stand trial for it.”

  Monk felt a sharp prickle of satisfaction—he did not like to call it pride.

  “Indeed. William Monk,” he introduced himself, allowing himself a faint smile. “Now I need to be sure that at that trial the man does not escape justice. He is claiming that he bought the guns quite legally, paying full price for them, and that he shipped them out from this station, on the train to Liverpool, the very night that the murders took place. There was a train to Liverpool that night?”

  “No trains before six in the morning, sir.” Pickering shook his head. “We don’t run night trains on this line.”

  Monk was taken aback. Suddenly the one thing he was sure of had slipped away.

  “None at all?” he pressed.

  “Well, the occasional special.” Pickering swallowed hard, but his eyes did not waver. “Private hire. Don’t often refuse one of those.”

  “Was there one that night? Friday, the twenty-eighth of June? It would really be the early hours of Saturday morning.”

  “I can look it up,” Pickering offered, turning to look at a sheaf of papers on a shelf behind his desk.

  Monk waited impatiently. The seconds stretched out into a minute, then two.

  “Here we are,” Pickering said at last. “Yes, by Jove, there was a special that night, all the way to Liverpool. Goods and a few passengers. Here you are.” He held out the sheaf of paper.

  Monk snatched it from him. The train had left at five minutes before two o’clock.

  “Are you sure it went on time?” he demanded. He heard the edge to his voice, and could not control it.

  “Yes, sir,” Pickering assured him. “That sheet is written up afterwards. It should have gone five minutes before. That’s the time it actually went.”

  “I see. Thank you.”

  “Does it help?”

  “Yes, it does. The murders could not have happened before about three o’clock.”

  Pickering looked relieved, and puzzled. “I see,” he said, although plainly he did not.

  “Do you know if it carried cases of guns?” Monk asked, not expecting an answer of any value.

  “Guns? No sir, just machinery, timber and I believe a consignment of bathroom furnishings.”

  “Why a special train for those?”

  “Bathroom furniture’s fragile, sir, I suppose.”
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  “Who hired it?”

  “On the bottom, there, sir.” Pickering pointed at the sheet in Monk’s hand. “Messrs. Butterby and Scott, of Camberwell.” He regarded Monk curiously. “Did you think the American took the guns on our train to Liverpool? Newspapers said he went down the river to Bugsby’s Marshes and then across the Atlantic to America. Seems like the sensible thing to do. If I’d just murdered three men and stolen thousands o’ guns, I’d get out of the country and away from the law as fast as I could. I wouldn’t even hang around on the river; I’d be down there as quick as the tide would carry me, and while it was still as dark as it gets, this time o’ the year.”

  “So would I,” Monk agreed. “I’d hope to have weighed anchor and be on the high seas before they’d traced which way I’d gone.”

  Pickering looked puzzled.

  “But if I hadn’t stolen them,” Monk explained. “If I’d bought them legitimately and didn’t know anything about murders, I’d go through Liverpool. It would save considerable time, days, rather than go all around the south coast of England before reaching the Atlantic.”

  Pickering’s bristly eyebrows shot up. “You think he didn’t do it? So who did, then?”

  “I don’t know what I think,” Monk admitted. “Except that whoever killed those men in Tooley Street did not travel north on one of your trains.”

  “I can swear to that,” Pickering assured him. “And I will, if I’m called. You get that devil, Mr. Monk. That’s no way to treat anybody. Whatever it is you think you’re fighting for!”

  Monk agreed with him, thanked him and took his leave.

  He spent the rest of the day and all the following one retracing his steps down the river from Tooley Street as far as Bugsby’s Marshes. Again he spoke to everyone who had seen the barge he and Lanyon had tracked the first time, and a good few others who might have. It was exactly the same as before: a heavily laden barge, piled with crates the size and shape to carry muskets, the barge lying low in the water, moving clumsily to begin with but gathering impetus as it increased speed out in the center of the current. Two men, one tall and lean and with a soft, foreign accent—they thought American. Certainly with its pronounced r’s and slightly slurred consonants it was not European of any sort. He had seemed to be in charge and was giving the orders.

  It had all been done discreetly, even stealthily, hailing no one else, ignoring the usual comradeship of the river men.

  Again he lost them at Bugsby’s Marshes. He tried several times to find anyone who had seen them beyond Greenwich, or who had seen an oceangoing ship coming, going or moored, but there was nothing.

  A waterman shrugged, leaning on his oars, wrinkling his eyes against the glare of the sun off the incoming tide.

  “Not so odd really,” he said, chewing on his lip. “ ’Idden ’round the bend o’ Bugsby’s Marshes, ’oo’d be lookin’? Lie there all night and not likely ter be seen, if yer lie close in, like. That’s wot I’d do … if I ’ad business as was private. Then be off on the first o’ the tide. Be out ter sea afore breakfast.”

  Monk thanked him and was about to turn away and walk back towards the Artichoke Tavern when the man called after him.

  “Eh! Yer wanner find out wot ’appened ter it?”

  Monk swiveled back. “Do you know?”

  “Course I don’t, or I’d a’ told yer. But yer said yer traced it down this far, an’ a blind man can see yer think it ’ad suffink valuable in it, suffink stolen.”

  Monk was impatient.

  “Well, ’aven’t yer asked them wot ’as the barge?” the waterman said, shaking his head.

  “Asked …” Then it struck Monk almost like a physical blow. He had followed the trail of the barge as far as Bugsby’s Marshes, but his mind had been fixed on Breeland and the guns. He had not thought of the barge’s returning upstream to wherever it was now! That might provide proof of Shearer’s complicity, and if not where he was now, then at least where he had gone after the murders. Monk could have kicked himself for not having done that straightaway. It seemed Lanyon had not thought of it either. They had both been so convinced that catching Breeland was everything, it had not seemed to matter. Presumably, Breeland’s undenied possession of the guns, plus his watch at the scene, had been proof enough without finding out where he had hired the barge, and from whom. That in itself was not incriminating. Breeland would claim he had done so in the hope of being able to purchase the guns in the usual way.

  But now it mattered.

  “Yes,” he said grudgingly. It pricked him to be taught the obvious by a river man whose job it was to row boats and understand tides. “Yes, I’ll trace the barge back up. Thank you.”

  The river man grinned and pushed his cap back farther on his head before picking up his oars again and pulling away.

  But even though he spent that evening until dusk, and all the day after, Monk found no trace of the barge’s return journey, nor did the river police know anything about a barge stolen or missing.

  “ ’Appens,” a gap-toothed sergeant told him, standing on the dockside in the sun, the tide lapping high at the pier stakes below them. “Mebbe it was stole from someone as stole it ’emselves, so they couldn’t say much. Or could be it were put back afore it were missed?”

  “Or maybe it belonged to whoever used it,” Monk added. “They might have been well paid to keep silent.”

  “Could be,” the sergeant agreed glumly. “Daresay yer’ll never know. Sorry I can’t ’elp yer. I can’t even tell yer w’ere ter begin. There’s ’undreds o’ wharfs an’ docks along the river, an’ scores of ’em ’d do yer a favor, if yer paid ’em right, an’ keep their mouths shut.”

  Monk stared across the busy river, light reflecting off the gray water between strings of barges going upstream with the incoming tide. They carried goods from all over the world, everything from timber, coal and machinery, to silks, spices and exotic furs, perhaps cotton from the Confederate states to feed the mills of Manchester and the north, and tobacco for the gentlemen’s cigars in Mayfair and Whitehall.

  A pleasure boat passed, decks lined with people, their straw hats on against the sun, scarves and handkerchiefs bright. Somewhere a hurdy-gurdy was playing. The air smelled of salt and fish and a whiff of tar.

  “Do you know an agent named Shearer?” Monk asked.

  The sergeant thought for a few moments. “Tall feller, thin, long nose an’ a lot o’ teeth?” he asked. “Crooked at the front, like?”

  “Actually, I don’t know. I’ve not met him.” And he had not seen Judith Alberton to ask her for a physical description. “He worked for Daniel Alberton, in Tooley Street.”

  “That’s the one. Sharp feller. Very quick ter see the advantage in anything.”

  “Do you know him, professionally, I mean?”

  “Criminally, like? No. Too fly for that, an’ no need, as I can see. Jus’ ’eard of him up an’ down the river.”

  “Do you know anything else about him?” Monk pressed him. “Do you know where he came from? Has he any political beliefs?”

  “Political beliefs?” The sergeant looked startled. “Like wot? Anarchist, or the like? Never ’eard ’e were dangerous, ’ceptin’ if yer crossed ’im over money. Could be nasty then, but so can a lot o’ folk.”

  “I was thinking of sympathies with either side in the American civil war.” Monk knew it sounded ridiculous as he said it, standing side by side with this river sergeant watching the barges nudging each other upstream towards the docks, the commerce of the world coming and going. This was trade, cargo, profit. It was tides, weather, tonnages, who bought and who sold and at what price. Washington and Bull Run were another life.

  “Shouldn’t think so.” The sergeant shrugged. “Shouldn’t think ’e even knew there was a war, ’less they bought summink for someone an’ wanted it shipped. S’pose that’s the guns, eh? Wouldn’t think a man like Shearer’d give a toss where they went, long as they were paid for.”

  That fit in with Monk�
�s theory that Breeland could have paid Shearer with the price of the guns, and Shearer could have been the one who murdered Alberton and took the guns down the river while Breeland himself and Merrit went to Liverpool by train. The only question then was why had Breeland been rash enough to trust Shearer? And obviously he had been right to do so, because the guns had arrived in Washington.

  But Monk could not believe it, not without some compelling reason why Breeland would trust Shearer. Yet it seemed there must have been such a fact.

  Was there another person involved? Not likely, unless it had in some way been Alberton himself, and he had then been betrayed by Shearer. Breeland had said the note sent to him had been from Shearer, but he would not know that. Anyone could sign Shearer’s name.

  One thing was absolutely certain: Monk was still a considerable distance from the truth.

  He made his way back to Tooley Street and the warehouse. It was busy now. Storage and shipment, buying and selling continued in spite of Alberton’s death. Perhaps it was not as thriving as it had been, but his reputation had been excellent, and Casbolt was still alive, although his part in the business had apparently been more to do with purchase.

  Monk went in through the open gates with an icy shiver of memory. There was a wagon in the center of the yard, horses shifting restlessly on the cobbles, flies buzzing around, a smell of manure, wood shavings, oil, sweat and tar heavy in the air. Two men were working together lowering a wooden crate from the winch into the back of the wagon, and they finished as he approached them. One lashed the crate firmly so it would not shift; the other went to close the warehouse doors.

  “Yeah?” The one at the wagon turned to Monk civilly enough. He was a square, heavy-shouldered man with a mild, blunt face. “ ’Elp yer, sir?”

  “I hope so. I’m looking for Mr. Shearer. I believe he used to work with Mr. Alberton,” Monk replied.

  “Yeah, ’e did an’ all,” the man responded, pushing his hand through what was left of his hair. “Poor Mr. Alberton’s dead, murdered. ’Spect you know that, all Lunnon does. But I ain’t seen Shearer for weeks. In fact, not since poor Mr. Alberton were done in, an’ that’s a fact.” He turned to the man coming back from closing the warehouse doors. “Eh, Sandy, feller ’ere’s lookin’ fer Shearer. Yer see ’im lately? ’Cos I ain’t.”